


Discordant Harmony

by creaturedreams



Series: The Symphony [1]
Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Affection, Anxiety Attacks, Canon Universe, Childhood Friends, Childhood Trauma, Content warning: Visceral descriptions of anxiety symptoms, Light Angst, M/M, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 18:05:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creaturedreams/pseuds/creaturedreams
Summary: A symphony in three parts; a conductive illustration of fear. Fear of time, fear of loss, fear of self. Performed in duets.Movement One: A melancholy soft jazz like a river's stream on a hot day, featuring piano and saxophone."Aren't you bored?"





	Discordant Harmony

**Author's Note:**

> couldn't get this one out of my head. sorry for making them so sad. please enjoy.

_Thwkk. Thwkk. ...Thwkk._ If the bullseye were Masato’s nerves, Ren would have aced every dart. The silence between each infrequent thud made the sound that much sharper. Masato felt it in his teeth.

Typically, his roommate’s mundane hobby was no more prominent than the buzz of a fan, but today it was maddening. Today, he felt the life of every cell beneath his skin. His hands felt hungry and reclusive. His mind felt oceanic. He had elected to simmer beneath his bedcovers, despite the hour being far past his normal waking routine. At least, by what he figured. Masato would not look at a clock.

 _  
_ _Thwkk. … Twkk. Thwk._ This was ridiculous. The beats weren’t even in time.

  
Masato sat up so suddenly in his bed that a flight or fight response momentarily gripped Ren’s features. “Hirijikawa, are you trying to get a dart to the head?,” Ren breathed, unbristling.

Masato’s peered at him evenly, eyes lidded with frustration. “I would almost prefer it at this point. Can you not find something quieter to busy yourself with right now?”

  
It infuriated him the way Ren’s expression responded. Like he had detected a change in the weather. It dissipated into a lazy smile quicker than could be observed by an untrained eye. The smile was a distraction. Ren’s hands were already placing the darts back into their case. “Or I can just keep playing. You going to give me a lecture? Or is throwing punches more your style now?”

  
“Are you honestly still upset about that?”

  
“Not at all. It was pretty hot.”

The disgusted grimace Masato knew he had been baited into elicited a quiet chuckle from Ren. For a moment, the swollen ache in Masato’s bones subsided, but returned on his next inhale. Suddenly claustrophobic beneath his blanket, he pivoted off the side of his mattress and watched Ren dutifully returning each glinting dart back to their velvet home. Practiced, sluggish fingers lined each point into their worn divots. Ren was moving in slow motion. Too slow. Time was thick and humming as Ren placed the last dart in a different direction from the others, letting it linger for a moment before righting its orientation. Masato’s skull threatened fragmentation. He had to look away.

  
“So,” Ren drawled, shutting the dart case, “Do you want to talk about what it is that’s bothering you?”

  
It was inevitable. Ren always knew. Masato kept his gaze fended, futile but stalwart in his rebellion towards being read as easily as he could read the other, loathe to admit the gift to do so was mutual. Instead of answering, he rose and moved rigidly to the sofa between their two beds. His reluctance to speak was birthed from a breed of humiliation that came from being unable to collect one’s emotions into coherence. He composed indifference. The anxious sick in his blood buzzed.

Ren lowered himself into a chair across from the sofa, his weight draping like folds of fabric into the seat. It was careful. He held back his shoulders as he sat and Masato knew Ren did so to make it feel like more space separated them, even if it didn’t. Masato would not admit gratitude. 

His roommate looked strange sitting there. A flame quelled. Frozen in its flicker. Masato looked past him, behind him. His hands struggled against the fists in his lap. He felt Ren watching him. Non-expectant. Present.

“Days off like this feel like a waste,” Masato’s voice stumbled an offering. He glanced up. Back down. The quiet itched. “Losing momentum at such a crucial time, the rest doesn’t seem restful.”

  
“Are you suggesting we do something productive to calm your nerves?” Ren quipped with a wink.

“I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  
Ren laughed. “Is it stress, then? Surely you have it in you to unwind a little before our final projects are assigned.”

  
The word “final” panged and echoed like a sour piano key had been struck in Masato’s pulse. Final. Final. “I am… just restless, is what I mean.”

  
Ren tilted his head so minutely that not a hair shifted across his face. “Maybe you’re just bored.”

  
Masato’s eyes darted up to meet Ren’s. Bored. That word held a different weight between them.

  
“Anyway,” Ren was quick to divert with a heavy exhale, closing his eyes to break their contact and lounging further back into his seat. He took his phone from the coffee table and began prodding at it absently. Masato peered at the device; his own phone was rarely charged nowadays. It was not unintentional. “Try to take it easy, Hijirikawa. You’ll get through the term. You’ve even booted my ass along the way. I doubt there’s any margin of failure on your part. Take a breath. It’s almost over.”

  
Masato was blindsided. The air around him blinked into a viscous cloud, filling his lungs like mud. Every atom exaggerated their gravity in his blood and pushed through his whimpering heart as if determined to snuff its vulgar pace.

  
_It’s almost over._

  
He heard Ren say his name, distant, like it had been shouted at the bottom of the sea. Ren, from miles away, discerned him with concern? Disgust? Pity? Masato’s nauseous vision abstracted the expression. His senses seemed to have aged in a fraction of a moment. The world around him had shrunk, crushed the composure from him like a shell beneath a heel.

  
“It’s almost over,” Masato repeated in a voice that was not his own. The noise of his whisper grasped in front of him, gripping at edges of his perspective in a wild labor to ground him. Masato felt the splintered shape of Ren enter his proximity, then quickly withdraw.

  
Masato experienced lifetimes pass before the pressure in his chest adjusted its monstrous grip, its iron fingers still curled, impendent. Ren remained stoic and observant as Masato willed sobriety into his tired resolve. Silence blurred the edges of the room like ringing in one’s ears.

  
“I am aware,” Masato’s voiced declared with injured poise, monotonous. His speech was heavy in his mouth. He attempted an equanimous gaze back at Ren, whose tense posture moderately relented.

Ren rose. Cautious.. “Well, I’ve been awake all night. The morning is still young. I think a little cat nap qualifies as something quieter than darts, eh?” He wandered to his bed and threw himself onto it with his hands behind his head. “Try and find some rest today, Masato.”

  
Masato flinched at the sobering sound his first name made in Ren’s voice. It pinned him back to the earth. However, it was not until the telltale purrs of Ren’s sleep filled the air did the world around him seem actual.

  
Masato closed his eyes, the blue within them stinging as though they had been pried open for millennia. The anxiety ebbed in waves from his chest.

  
Bored? Masato did not know what true boredom felt like - there was always something to do, something small or something productive. His hands did not know rest. It was a tedium of his tenacious will. Ren knew this. Between them, boredom was an illustration of their lives, played out like bullet points on a timeline as they were thrown unceremoniously from one dot to the next. Ren had known right away.

  
For all of Ren’s grace in conversation, Masato had learned over time the rather endearing quirk that the other man was absolutely awful at initiating them. His looks and status meant he rarely was put in the position to do so - he was always the approached. From that point, his charm carried him. Masato, however, had not once sought out Ren in their interactions There was a certain pleasure in seeing the amiable Ren fumble a social advance, even when it often meant their exchanges were attentive silences. This particular trait had been true of Ren since they were children. In retrospect, he mused on exactly how long Ren had probably suffered what words to say when he had approached the young Masato the night they met. The words he had chosen would eventually grow into a foreign tongue of different definition between the two boys: “It’s boring, isn’t it?”

From that point onward, that question was a cue. An acknowledgement. Ren used it every time - right before they stole away to explore at business parties, right before they talked about their futures with childish fantasy, right before their parents’ insistence of their childhood separation became law. No matter the context, it always begged the same plea: “Do you want to escape?”

  
Before his first year at Saotome Gakuen, it was music that bit at Masato’s lungs and fingertips. Each attempt to focus on his family, his legacy, his duty, whined like tensed strings when he allowed himself to so much as consider a change in his stars. The seed had been planted by a chance encounter on a stroll. But, at the end of every day, the waves mollified beneath his imperious resolve. Each day in this cycle was the same. His soul was run ragged.

He hadn’t seen Ren in years at the point. There was hardly any communication between them, both now rigorously set on their predetermined and parallel paths. There was occasional texts, check-ins to make sure they were still both existing, but he didn’t even know what Ren’s voice sounded like anymore.

One day and orange envelope was passed to him from a servant. The color rightly struck suspicion into his defenses. He opened the letter. It was written in eloquent but unpracticed freehand on the Jinguji family letterhead. Masato remembers being annoyed at the gesture - inconvenienced that now he was obligated to read the verbose thing. Ren wrote about his recent life, inflatingthe unimportant, like day trips and unnamed social encounters, and skirting the most important, like his family’s decree that he should attend a prestigious music school and be the bonafide mask of his father’s conglomerate. Each semantic cue oozed personality, and Masato attempted to compose the sound of Ren’s voice in his mind as he read. It was the most he had heard the other boy speak since they were children.

  
The letter was not signed. At the close of the second page, Ren coyly well-wished Masato’s plans as heir. It was followed by a final, separated phrase; the ink looked darker, as if written in a different pen of the same color at a different time than the rest.

  
“ _Aren’t you bored?”_

  
The strings snapped. Masato negotiated the terms of a year’s attendance to Saotome Gakuen the first opportunity that he had.

The restlessness was different now. The tremendous weight grew with every success with STARISH, with every day past his year, with every missed phone call from home, with every quiet, content moment with Ren. So laden was he that his body trembled with every step. His eyes neglected sleep for fear of being crushed in his unconsciousness. Masato turned to his sleeping roommate and felt the silence digging into his skin.

  
Bored? No, he wasn’t bored. He was terrified.

  
All of this… it was almost over.

* * *

Ren stirred awake when he felt a dip of weight onto his mattress. His drowsy eyes adjusted to Masato’s form perched at the edge of his bed, and he immediately sat up on his elbows to put a distance between them.

“H-Hirijikawa?” he muttered groggily. He rubbed his eyes. “Everything alright?”

Masato was staring at him, intent, but not on him. His deep blue eyes searched for words that his mouth opened to deliver before they died on his tongue. Ren stayed quiet to allow his friend time to find life in a phrase. Masato sighed and closed his eyes a moment before opening them to focus on Ren, the defeat in his features transforming abruptly into determination.

  
“Are you bored?”

  
Ren felt his heart skip. He couldn’t help the dumbfounded expression as he deciphered what Masato had just asked him. Their entire lives, that question had never been spoken by Masato. Confusion turned into concern. Before Ren could answer, Masato briskly stood and looked down at him.

“We’re going somewhere. I’ve already packed you a bag for the day. We can take a taxi.”

  
It was no longer a question.

  
They gathered their things and left the school in silence. Even while they waited for their cab, Ren didn’t ask where their destination may be. Instead, he watched the other boy heedfully, while the boy in question scarcely looked his direction.

  
Masato had been visibly ragged lately, despite his best attempts to conceal it. Ren did his best to be present without being intrusive. Without being overbearing. It was absolute torture.

  
In the backseat of the taxi, Masato passively surveyed the world rushing by outside the window, his body folded neatly towards the door. Ren put in his headphones and rested his chin on the back of his hand. He stayed quiet and as physically separated as the space would allow. It had felt lately like all he could do for Masato was respect his space. Such was the standard - spacial consideration was always key in their relationship. While Ren was far more prone to invade others’ personal spaces, with Masato, it was about respect. And, as Ren had concluded years ago, there was not a person on the earth whom he respected more than Masato. It was as if in every one of their interactions, a spirit followed them, scrupulously measuring the distance between their bodies in exact inches.

Just an hour prior, Masato had broken two rules between them. He had been so close when he had asked the one question Ren had always been the one to ask. Worry ate at his nerves.

  
Earlier in the day, Masato had looked at Ren as if he had punched him. It had filled Ren with such sick terror that he had to sleep the nausea away, sleep away the panic he saw rise like a storm in Masato’s eyes. He glanced at Masato now, who was putting on an awfully good show of pretending Ren wasn’t there. His expression was indecipherable. Ren wanted to jump out of the moving car.

  
Was Masato going to disappear again from his life? Was it his fault? He should have been more considerate. He should have pushed himself harder on his own, he should’nt have added that extra stress to Masato, he should have grown the fuck up and -

  
“Jinguji, we’re here.”

  
Ren blinked and took the headphones out of his ears. Masato had already gotten out of the vehicle and had both their bags on either shoulder. He floundered the door handle and hurried out, patting the wrinkles from his clothes as he took in his surroundings. They were… in the woods? He sent a questioning look to Masato, who closed his eyes and soundlessly started down a nearby dirt path.

Ren trailed behind Masato. The forest was truly beautiful. It was not far from the academy - just within half an hour’s cab - but he had never had much reason to visit. The dying springtime glistened on leaves blushing with their last breaths of green and locusts wailed a lullaby in the thick. Gravel crunched under their footfalls, an invasive sound in the wind’s chorus through the branches. Ren slipped his hands into his pockets and followed Masato’s auto-piloted path. His step was more sure than it had been lately. The blue in his hair reflected flashes of the clear sky that spilled through the forest canopy. Ren allowed himself to inhale for what felt like the first time since he awoke.

  
A whisper of rushing water grew into a roar. The rush of relief and hint of amusement escaped as a chuckle from Ren. _Of course,_ he thought. “A little dramatic just to come to your waterfall, Hijirikawa.”

Masato shot him a glare and stopped to place their bags on a boulder at the stream’s edge.

  
Ren stretched his arms towards the sun. “Why did you want me to tag along, exactly? You know meditation isn't really my style. Won’t my ‘incessant lack of focus’ ruin the mood?”

  
Masato produced a white linen robe from the bags he had packed. He tossed it at Ren’s face and looked a little disappointed when Ren caught it. “That’s certainly a possibility.”

  
Ren held the garment out in front of him as Masato stripped to his underwear and slipped into his own matching robe. “You can’t be serious,” Ren said with a playful frown.

  
“I’m only ever serious. I thought that was my problem?”

  
Oh, so Masato wanted to be funny now. Ren snorted and followed Masato’s example. He was thankful the mood between them had shifted back into their normal banter, and he was not about to take advantage of it.

  
He watched as Masato stepped into the river, as if apologetic to disturb it, and wade towards the waterfall. His hair and robe hugged his features as they were drenched and he shut his eyes as if falling asleep. Ren soaked in the sight of Masato’s calm and the air in his lungs sang with solace. For a moment, he was able to abate the image of Masato’s anxious eyes that had been burned behind his own.

  
The waterfall thing was typical Masato. Normally he would come here with Tokiya. On occasion, he’d take one of their other friends. But, never him. So why him _this_ time? Ren stepped heavily into the river, taking a moment to acclimate to the temperature before joining Masato beneath the falls. 

It was miserable. His hair glued itself in unattractive strands all over his face and shoulders. Water flooded his ears to the point he could taste it. He attempted to pout at Masato, but he could barely see the other boy through the stream. Trying his best to focus, he clenched his eyes shut in a sneer. Well, this certainly got his mind off anything but being annoyed and wet.

Ren wasn’t sure how much time he had spent focusing when a grip on his wrist startled him into nearly swallowing a gallon of river. He was tugged backwards and struggled to keep his footing on the slick riverbed as he was pulled from the heavy stream like a suction. Masato released his wrist and was staring at him.

  
Masato seemed to be hesitating. Ren was so fixated on the other’s expression that the world tunneled upon it until Masato turned away and began striding away through knee-deep water. Ren’s vision expanded like a choking lung released. They stood in the mouth of a massive cavern; a calm lagoon glowed with borrowed sunlight from an opening opposite of the waterfall. Stalagmites and stalactites shimmered with damp minerals and dripped with reverberant echoes on the pool’s surface. Wind hummed against the grotto walls in sporadic gusts. The riverbed spread from a rocky shore behind the waterfall into a solid, shallow pier at the pool’s edge. Ren had only seen places like this on television. It was unearthly.

  
“Jinguji?” Masato’s voice echoed low in the grotto. “Over here.”

Ren tore his eyes from his surroundings and back to Masato, who was standing a few strides away on an outcropping of rock. He grabbed at the pool’s shore and lifted himself from the water. “So this is where you’re always hiding on your outings.” Ren straightened himself and smiled at Masato. “Do you bring all your dates back here on your meditation trips?” he teased. 

Masato looked back at Ren as he climbed onto the low jut of rock overhanging the lagoon. His eyes were firm. “... No, you’re the first.”

  
It was Ren’s turn to hesitate. Any sarcastic comeback had caught in his throat. Ice gathered in his limbs. The air had become solemn again.

  
Once they both were on the peninsula, Ren sat at the border of their personal space beside Masato, toeing the water beneath to watch it ripple. Masato had his knees drawn to his chest. The pool shimmered in his eyes.

  
Ren stifled a shiver as the cool cavern air dried his hair and robe. It was a welcome discomfort over the silence. It was one of the rare moments in which he could not get a read on Masato, but his anxiety was nonetheless infectious. Ren somersaulted over what to say in his mind, searching for anything to break Masato from the thoughts that were visibly welling stress into his shoulders.

“Time is an ever-rushing river,” Masato spoke. His eyes bore into the water like a challenge. “When I’m beneath the falls, it feels as though I can control it’s flow. I can physically hinder it. In this cavern, where the water is still, it’s as if time has ceased completely. I can finally feel at ease.”

  
Masato reached down to disturb the pool’s surface with his fingertips. “Here, I can escape time. But, when I leave, time has not stopped at all. Instead I am falling behind. And the world has kept moving forward without me.” Ren felt a frantic tug in his ribcage when he saw Masato’s face grow taut in an effort to quell the glisten pooling over his irises. His voice was somber, hushed, defeated. “I’m almost out of time. I cannot control it.”

  
Ren’s vocabulary made a frenzied attempt to piece together something coherent to soften Masato’s thoughts, but his heart climbed into his vocal chords and lodged itself there when Masato finally looked up to meet his eyes. Ren knew, then, that bringing him here was in desperation. For Masato to control a constant in his life and suspend it here with him. He was afraid Ren would, like time, eventually race forward without him. Ren’s heart shattered in his throat. He felt like sobbing.

  
“Hijirikawa… You don’t have to go back home. You can stay here, with us, with the guys and with Nanami. You don’t - “

  
“This was only ever temporary. I have been foolish with the time I’ve stolen. And now, It’s almost over.” Masato’s voice was cold and stern. He looked back to the water.

  
Ren could not find the strength to fight the finality in Masato’s words. His heartache grew into fury - it was not Masato’s duty to fulfill a life he was not made for. He was meant to be here. With STARISH. With Ren. Making music for himself and for the world. If time was a river, he wanted nothing more than to take the weight that Masato burdened with such honorable grace and cast it into its stream. He was angry at Masato for allowing this. For being selfish. After how far they'd come, he was ready to just refuse it? Someone so strong falling submission to something so unfair? His jaw clenched in a painful seethe. He wanted to scream at Masato, to shake him and beg him and rile the duty from his veins. Family, legacy… it had taken almost everything from Ren. And now it was going to take Masato, too.

“Mn, no. No. this isn’t a discussion, Hirijikawa. Like hell you’re going to just leave all this behind. Time will keep going, but it’ll keep going just like this - with you making music and being with people who genuinely care about your well-being.”

In his fuming, he had barely noticed Masato’s reaction. His anger was extinguished by the look on the other’s face. The change in his posture. His lips pursing back words. A ghost in the image of the boy he knew.

  
Ren faltered. The muscles in his arms stung; he wanted to reach towards Masato, to feel the tempest of Masato’s aura against his knuckles, to gauge the true disquiet beneath its silent fog. He evened his voice and exhaled, combing his hand through his drying bangs. “That’s enough of this, alright? Don’t overthink it. It’s not over yet.” 

Masato’s cobalt eyes lifted from middle distance and fell on Ren. He felt exaggerated under their scrutiny. Ren’s body tensed and measured its habitual width between them, but it was Masato who closed the distance between their mouths.

  
It was far from the first time they had kissed. As children, they had been each other's first. A chaste and oafish gesture that neither would admit when asked. Ren had seen kissing on TV, and his 7-year-old mind had already made his best friend a target. Ren waited entire months for the next business banquet. Masato had been willing, if not painfully shy. They counted down from three in unison. Masato couldn’t open his eyes for an hour afterwards in embarrassment. Ren teased him and Masato was crimson with happiness. It was their secret. Masato felt like Ren was his. When they grew further into their pre-teens, kisses were no longer a child’s affection. The boys danced around the implications in favor of intimacy - the most lacking resource between their two lives. They could create it like this. It was theirs. Since reuniting with Ren at Saotome Gakuen, they had only kissed once. Within their first week of being roommates, the rivalrous tensions and all their years lost erupted into a kiss like a fistfight. The violence in it had terrified them both. It was monstrous. Ravenous. It had been years since then. They never talked about it. Ren had believed that kiss was the last.

  
Their kisses never meant anything, not really. Masato had always kept himself entrenched in purpose - too busy with school or craft to even consider romantic ventures. And that was his preference. Masato was adamant in holding his physical affections like a treasure to be presented to the first person that proved by fire and flame to be his soulmate. But, even Masato Hirijikawa pined for touch. For a connection less severe. Something familiar. Ren, who had amassed a wealth of experience from the mouths and bodies of his admirers, could not bear his own abundance. The idea Ren instilled with his charm was that of the infallible lover, the one with ambrosial words, every touch remiss, calculated, seductive. There was no more joy in it. When he kissed Masato, he was not performing. He was not held to a standard by the lips that held his own. Ren was _allowed_ to feel inept, to be clumsy and unflattering without disgrace. In their arrangement, Masato was able to exercise casual intimacy, and Ren was able to enjoy touch without expectation. It was a compromise. A business deal. Innocent.

  
Now, in this place removed from time, their kiss gasped and choked as if drowning. Masato pushed his weight into Ren and their teeth clashed. Masato ran his tongue over the sting. Ren wrapped his arms around Masato’s shoulders (he had learned when they were young that Masato abhorred being held around the waist) to steady the other’s vigor. Ren felt himself drifting. Something was different. Something was wrong. An involuntary hum from Ren tremored through their jaws as Masato’s tongue glided over his own. Masato was pushing deeper, submitting more of his weight into Ren’s hold than he ever had before. Ren could taste the tremble in the quick breaths thieved between every insatied impact. Masato’s kiss was overwrought. Hungry. Impetuous.

  
This kiss… it felt like a goodbye.

Ren’s heart boiled in his throat. Like hot daggers, the realization behind Masato’s passion stabbed into his lungs, into his stomach. Before Ren could convince himself to pull away, Masato grasped the front of his robe and pulled their chests closer. The wild palpitations of Masato’s heart against his chest consumed his own pulse. The corners of his vision abstracted with blissed daze. _Innocent. Innocent._ Masato wolfish mouth breathed a moan like hymn against Ren’s own. Ren’s eyes rolled shut. His heart was wrenched from his throat and liquified. His lungs swole and melted. They dripped from the confines of his rib cage and pooled into his gut. His limbs surrendered into dizzying weightlessness.

  
Ren was hardly lucid when Masato broke the kiss. Masato turned his eyes away with a frown, his face still tinted with heat and lips kiss-swollen. Ren didn’t possess enough current faculty to resist Masato pushing from his hold. The other boy didn’t look embarrassed, or ashamed. He looked apologetic. Ren’s molten blood rapidly solidified in his veins. His heart was heavy in his stomach.

As though he were observing from outside his own body, Ren watched Masato draw both his knees to his chest and bury his head between them. Ren shifted out of Masato’s proximity. Every aspect of his being felt sore, empty. Helplessness engulfed him.

  
When he and Masato were ten years old, their families attended a networking event at a hotel that seemed bigger than their entire worlds. While it’s location still boasted a modern atmosphere, it was far from either of their homes. The typical one-night event was spanned over four days. The boys were ecstatic to spend the generous amount of time together. They explored every corner of the convention space and roamed the halls of every floor, fabricating stories about what mystical guests may be thriving behind each door. On the second day, Masato was less spirited. He looked pale and sunken. Ren pilfered some snacks, thinking perhaps his friend was just hungry. On the third day, Masato’s exhaustion was apparent. As Ren watched the other boy groggily devour the baked snacks he had been brought, a sickening realization occurred to Ren. Masato had told him many times before that his father terrified him, so much so that he was unable to eat in his presence. Normally, these business events only lasted a couple of days at most, but this one, almost a week, had meant Masato was forced to sleep in the same room as his parents. Masato had been too distressed to sleep around his father... for _days._ Ren kept his realization like fire under his skin. He turned to Masato and asked casually if he wanted to sneak out after his parents were asleep to explore. When Masato seemed reluctant, Ren asked him, _“Aren’t you bored?”_ It was settled. That night, Ren stuffed a duffel bag with spare blankets and pillows from his family’s room and waited for them to fall sleep before slipping out the door with his pack. Ren sat outside the Hirijikawa’s room quietly until a soft click and buzz of a door revealed a timid Masato. Ren flashed him an assuring smile and jumped up, taking the other’s wrist and leading him to the hotel’s convention space. It was empty and soft - intercom piano music playing through the quiet vacant space. The floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the floor and the neighborhood outside twinkled in the night, blue against the warm orange of the hotel ambiance. Once he was certain they were someplace that employees and guests didn’t venture this time of night, Ren plopped himself onto the floor. In a small space between the windows and the small sitting area couches, he diligently spread out blankets and duvets and pillows into a crude pile. Masato observed him with curious silence. Ren fell back onto the cushion and pat the spot beside him, trying to seem nonchalant. “ _You’re tired, right? Let’s sleep!”_ Masato lowered himself onto his knees. He still looked unsure. Scared. Ren laughed nervously and pulled the other boy down onto his chest. Ren fronted a consoling smile until he felt Masato’s tense form relax into a quick and deep sleep. Although the real significance of Masato’s voluntary sleep deprivation was lost on a child who could not fully grasp the situation, Ren felt a terrible pressure on his heart. The face Masato wore in his sleep was the expression of someone on the verge of tears. He had decided, then, that no matter what the future held, he would do anything within his power to protect Masato from the daunting unknown ahead. Help him breathe. Help him escape. The young Ren looked down at Masato’s face and hiccuped a sob. The tears wouldn’t stop. He didn’t understand why. Masato was so gripped in curative slumber to even stir at the sound.

Masato wore the same expression now. The pressure in Ren’s chest was the same. He had convinced himself that, if he kept stealing Masato away, kept escaping, he was doing something proactive. In reality, he had failed. Everything he offered was temporary. It was not good enough.

  
The echoing drips from the grotto ceilings kept time in the passing silence. Ren felt like Masato was miles away. Tentatively, he reached towards Masato and stroked his hair from his eyes. The blunt, angled fringe felt like the soft bristles of a paintbrush against his fingers. Masato blinked and lifted his head, disturbed from his thoughts by surprise of the affectionate gesture. Ren withdrew his hand and coughed a flustered chuckle.

  
“Eh- sorry, I was just thinking…. Are you ever going to change this stupid haircut?”

  
Masato looked derisive for a moment before his features settled into a smile. Ren breathed with reprieve.

  
“I apologize,” Masato replied, “I must have missed the trend of styling one’s overgrown chop-cut to specifically curl around a single eye.”

  
Ren snorted and let out an ugly laugh. Masato’s bullying quips meant things had returned to normal. For the time being, Ren relaxed, despite today’s events breathing down his neck like a preying beast. He leaned back on his hands and kicked at the water beneath them.

  
Ren had made up his mind long ago - Masato was permanent fixture in time’s stream. The other boy was consistently at the back of his thoughts, taking up a space in his mind carved especially for him since their childhood. They weren’t lovers, hardly rivals, and dubiously friends, but he could not deny that he and Masato were fatefully intertwined. Not a single person on the earth understood either of them like they understood one another. No possible future would change that.

  
“Hirijikawa…” Ren began, more confident in filling the quiet, though not confident enough to face Masato when he spoke, “I won’t pretend like I know how the future is going to play out. What I do know, is that at the very least, you can always reach out to me. I’ll always answer. I think that’s been proven enough through the years. Even if your path with music ends here.... I mean, it’s not like we need to socialize or be near each other all the time … that doesn’t really seem like _us_ anyway, you know?”

  
Ren dared a glance at the boy beside him. Masato’s eyes had softened. His smile was slight but luminous. 

The corners of Ren’s lips curled into a smirk. He gave Masato a wink. “Whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with me. On any path. I hope the path that fulfills you the most is the one where I’m stuck with you, too.”

  
Masato breathed a benevolent scoff and turned his eyes back to the water. He stretched his legs out from his chest and leaned to soak them in the pool. He was still smiling. Ren was afraid Masato would float away like a feather as he watched the tension evaporate from his shoulders and be blown away by the breeze.

  
Ren rolled his head back onto his shoulders and closed his eyes. He could finally allow himself to relax for the first time today. He had almost nodded off when he felt something on the top of his hand at his side. He blinked his eyes open to see Masato had modestly placed his pinky and ring finger on top of Ren’s, minimally curled on his own. Ren kept his hand still. The other boy was still watching the water, still physically distanced, acting as if he was doing nothing out of the ordinary. Ren almost laughed aloud. 

  
Masato was thanking him.


End file.
